Adherents.com: Religious Groups in Literature

34,420 citations from literature (mostly science fiction and fantasy) referring to real churches, religious groups, tribes, etc. [This database is for literary research only. It is not intended as a source of information about religion.]

"'--across a structure as big as the Parthenon! Hell, bigger than the Temple of Zeus!' "

Greco-Roman classical religion

world

1968

Ellison, Harlan. "The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World " in The Hugo Winners: Volumes One and Two. (Isaac Asimov, ed.) Garden City, NY: Nelson Doubleday (1971; story copyright 1968); pg. 802.

"He had the seven-headed dog faces of an ancient Cerberus. Each head watched, waiting hungry, insane. "

Greco-Roman classical religion

world

1972

Wolfe, Gene. "The Fifth Head of Cerberus " in Modern Classics of Science Fiction. (Gardner Dozois, ed.) New York: St. Martin's Press (1991; story c. 1972); pg. 332-396.

[The title of this story, of course, is taken from the figure in Greco-Roman myth which guards the underworld.]

Pg. 135: "...when the trans-Plutonian planet Janus had been found at last and named after the two-faced Roman god of doorways--doorway to the Solar System and doorway to the Stars. "; Pg. 146: "Prometheans who had mastered the secrets of nuclear fire... "

"The Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans originated our civilization, populated it with their gods, and formed, in their chthonic wisdom, a heaven underfoot. Some heretical Jews inherited that civilization, changed its gods to demons, and called heaven hell. Oh, they tried to pretend there was a new heaven somewhere up in the attic, but it was a most unconvincing deceit... "

"...from my peyote visions and Osiris and enormous female breasts and Spider Man and the Tarot Magus and Good Old Charlie Brown and Bugs Bunny with a Tommy gun and Jughead and Archie and Captain America and Hermes Thrice-Blessed and Zeus and Athene and Zagreus and his lynxes and panthers and Micky [sic] Mouse and Superman and Santa Claus and Laughing Buddha Jesus and a million million birds... "

"...Naismith could not help thinking again of lost spirits, wandering forever under the Earth. The Greeks had imagined a Hell like that; the Egyptians, too. A phrase from some chance reading came back to him: 'the chthonic ourobouros.' "

"at the site of McAfee's home near Gibraltar in Spain... This impulse would cause the western Mediterranean to pulse and roil until it constructed a levee of earth and rock across the Gates of Hercules, damming the sea from its principal tributary, the Atlantic Ocean... "

Greco-Roman classical religion

world

1981

Baxter, Stephen. Voyage. New York: HarperCollins (1996); pg. 308.

"Josephson pulled his lip. 'Hmm. How did the name 'Apollo' come about? That was before my time--'

Michaels said, 'It was picked out by Abe Silverstein in 1960. Now Abe was the head of the Office of Manned Spaceflight at the time--or rather, its predecessor. Silverstein kind of dabbled in the classical myths. He'd picked the name 'Mercury' a year earlier, because he liked the idea of a messenger in the sky. And then von Braun's people called their new launch vehicle 'Saturn,' and so another classic god seemed a natural choice to Silverstein.' "

Greco-Roman classical religion

world

1981

Baxter, Stephen. Voyage. New York: HarperCollins (1996); pg. 308.

"'Maybe so,' Josephson said with half smile, 'but that's rather muddled. Isn't it true that von Braun was actually naming his rockets after planets? There was the 'Jupiter,' and then the 'Saturn'--'

'Give me a break,' Michael said good-humoredly. 'Silverstein was a research engineer; what did he know? Anyhow, Silverstein remembered from his schooldays the story of the god who rode the chariot of the sun drawn by four winged horses: Apollo, the son of Zeus. So Silverstein did a bit of checking to make sure Apollo hadn't done anything that would be too inappropriate for the American public, such as screwing his mother, and found he hadn't--and so Apollo it was.' "

Greco-Roman classical religion

world

1981

Baxter, Stephen. Voyage. New York: HarperCollins (1996); pg. 308.

"Josephson studied his drink and thought about it. 'Well, maybe we ought to follow the same tradition. I know a little mythology too. Apollo had a half brother. Another great Olympian god. He had his own mythology; it was only later that he was identified with the Romans' war-god . . . Only battle and bloodshed gave him any pleasure; his twin children Phobos and Deimos--Panic and Fear--accompanied him onto the battlefield . . .' "

"'Appendixes: Social Relationships in the Commonwealth "; "The religious are almost as enigmatic as the god they serve, a god that appears fundamentally solar, but not Apollonian. (Because the Conciliator is given a Claw, one is tempted to make the easy association of the eagle of Jove with the sun; it is perhaps too pat). "

"The Greek god Apollo slew one [a dragon] in establishing his temple at Delphi... The sea monster that threatened the beautiful Andromeda and was slain by Perseus in the Greek myths is sometimes spoken of as a dragon... The sea monster that threatened the beautiful Andromeda and was slain by Perseus in the Greek myths is sometimes spoken of as a dragon. So is Leviathan, the great sea monster mentioned in the Bible.

Some dragons were abnormally monstrous, such as the manly-headed Hydra, slain by Hercules, or the six-headed Scylla, whose gauntlet Odysseus had to run. "

"The seven old crones stared down from their curving dais at Tisianne. They should be passing an eye back and forth, Mark thought, for their gray hair and cold expressions reminded Mark of the Greek legend of the Graeae. "

Greco-Roman classical religion

world

1993

Sagan, Carl. Contact. New York: Simon & Schuster (1985); pg. 72.

"A few of the telescopes, the duty officer could see, were devoted to picking up some missed data in Hercules. The remainder were aiming, boresighted, at an adjacent patch of sky, the next constellation east of Hercules... "

"According to Rachel, everyone started fresh at Contact. Basically, they entered a new state of being. It's not the Last Judgment--no sins are punished. It's not the Judeo-Christian paradise at all. More like the ancient Greek idea of the Golden Age, when men were so pious they socialized with the gods. "

"I gazed upon a tapestry of beauty, a golden phalanx freshly out of the Elysian fields and hills. The gates of mythology swung wide and Apollo and his demi-Apollos glided forth, each more beautiful than the last. "

Pg. 2: "The forms take shape, grow solid all around her. In the way dreams have of being simultaneously different and familiar, it seems longer this time. She is walking deeper into the area defined by these phantom shapes. She wants to call it a temple, though she does not know why. There is nothing holy here, she is sure, and yet the impression of columns, of the smooth floor, the vaulted ceiling, makes her think of ancient Greece, of the Parthenon in all its unbroken splendor, of statues of Zeus, Athena, Apollo. All the false gods who ruled the minds of men before the Truth was laid bare to them. "; Pg. 3: "indeed in a temple built very much in the style of Athens in its glory. " [Other refs. not in DB, as certain elements or Wonder Woman's Paradise Island home are sometimes compared to classical Greek religion/culture/mythology. Also, Diana's abilities are directly derived from the ancient Greek gods.]

Greco-Roman classical religion

world

1995

Hawke, Simon. The Whims of Creation. New York: Warner Books (1995)

[Frontispiece] "'They made fast all the running tackle of the swift dark hull and got out the drinking bowls. These they filled with wine, brim-full, and poured out a offerings to the Immortal Gods that are for ever and ever: honoring especially the clear-eyed Daughter of Zeus: while the ship cleft through the long night towards the dawn.'

"...would remind Dionysos that he was also born of the simple nymph Semele, who was cruelly tricked unto death by Hera for having been seduced by Zeus. but the demagogue's ill-schooling undoes him... 'Apollo oversaw your city's law-making...' " [Many other refs. throughout story, not in DB.]

Greco-Roman classical religion

world

1996

Fry, Stephen. Making History. New York: Random House (1996); pg. 290.

"'...The water of Brunau was to be used, in the Fuhrer's words, 'to cleanse the Reich, as Hercules had cleansed the Augean stables. All the filth of Europe will be washed away...' ' "

"Finckley: I'm curious. As a super hero yourself, who are your heroes?

Worthington: Oooh, tough question. Captain America, certainly. He was willing to take a chance on two mutants who wanted to do good when nobody else would, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch... Hercules once told me that on Olympus the gods measured wisdom against Athena, speed against Hermes, and power against Zeus--but they measured courage against Captain America. "

"Helena shook her head... 'The early Christians accepted the existence of the gods their faith supplanted,' she said, lapsing for a moment into the tone of voice Cassie thought of as her mother's 'lecture mode.' As the chief curator of the Gateway City Museum of Cultural Antiquities, Helena had an unfortunate habit--in the eyes of her teenaged daughter--of turning everything into some reference to her work. 'They accepted the existence of the Greco-Roman gods,' Helena said. 'They simply chose not to worship them. Eventually, they even turned some of them into the prototypes for their images of demons and goblins. Pan in particular seemed to hold a special fear and fascination for them. He became the blueprint for less sophisticated pictures of the Devil, and even gave us the word panic.' "

"Rebecca was surprised again, for a moment. She did not think, in all the times she had given thought to such things, that she had ever before given the old gods, the Greco-Roman gods, the credit inherent in referring to them as 'beings.' To do that would be to give them a kind of life, to acknowledge them as something that existed, that was real.

This was something Rebecca had never considered, never allowed into her thoughts. Even as a girl, watching reruns of Star Trek, she had been deeply offended--though she had not been sure why, then--by the episode that proposed the Greek gods to have been space travelers...

They were never real, she thought, feeling strength returning to her in a sense of renewed purpose. They might have been some half-guessed shadows, hints of the greater Truth that Humankind was still struggling to comprehend--after all, they did prefigure some significant portions of Judeo-Christian lore... "

"'...The destruction of the One World sent energy spilling in all directions into the Universe... scattered through the cosmos. It planted seeds, so that mortals who evolved there were invested with the power of the old gods and rose themselves to godhead. Here on Earth it struck in many places and spawned the gods of Olympus, the Norse gods, the Aztec and other gods. All much more than mortal, all touched by something we might call divine.' "

Pg. 76: "Two days before the Zeus IV landed, NASA announced that three major Hollywood studios would collaborate on the most expensive film of all time... " [From J. G. Ballard's 'The Message from Mars'.]; Pg. 88: Cassandra; Promethean fire; Pg. 96: Pandora's box

Greco-Roman classical religion

world

1998

Wilson, Robert Charles. Mysterium. New York: Bantam (1994); pg. 91.

"But the Spaniards were pressing at the western border, and the news was not as rosy as the radio made it seem, and the Republic was worth preserving--for all its faults... it was at least a place where the two races, the French and the English, had achieved a modus vivendi; it was more liberal than the European monarchies, with their nationalist heresies or Romish paganisms. " [Other refs. not in DB.]

Greco-Roman classical religion

world

1998

Wilson, Robert Charles. Mysterium. New York: Bantam (1994); pg. 206.

"He had been especially fascinated by the wild cosmogonies of the early Christian Gnostics, creation myths cobbled together from fragments of Judaism, Hellenic paganism, eastern mystery religions. "

"'Well, it's not exactly the Oxford History of the World. You want a summary? It starts with the Garden of Eden. Adam gets a human body from the Archons--'

'The which?'

'Archons. Minor gods. Adam is psyche and Eve is spirit and the serpent isn't necessarily the bad guy, but after that it's fairly straight Genesis all the way to Moses and the pharaohs. Egypt, Greece, and Rome are presented as fairy tales--Romulus and Remus and the genius of Plato and so on, but at least it's recognizable... It starts to go wrong around the second century. Valentinus is the Great Christian; Irenaeus is the persecutor of the faithful. The conversion of Constantine never happened. Rome was a seat of classical paganism until at least the 800s, and there are hints that Hellenic paganism is a vital religion even today--at least, in certain unenlightened foreign countries. "

"With some difficulty, Jarvis had persuaded the surly giant to trade his damp purple pants for a pair of Hercules's old brown trousers. Even wearing hand-me-downs from the mighty Son of Zeus, the Hulk's trunk-like legs... "

"I play around at fist. Find somebody there have been thousands of biographies of--Hitler. There's a huge, almost day-to-day account, tons of film, all flat and almost all black and white. Zeus shows up with a note that not all the stories fit together and he probably is entirely mythical. "

"...the men in the belly of the wooden horse waiting to be born and wreak destruction, and the pai of parturition, and Athena was born of the head of Zeus, and Time ate his children, as though he were not only in the wooden horse of the express but was it about to deliver the city to its enemy... Approaching them, the helpless stupid Odysseus of the twenty-first century, who must also be Odin blind in one eye so as not to let his right hand know what his left was doing. Odinzeus, wielder of thunderbolts, how could he aim correctly without parallax? "

"And it [the ocean] has always had its gods: Dagon, Nun, Nodens, Ran, Rigi, Neptune, Poseidon... The harp of the seas, which Diana the moon goddess strums with rapt solemnity, is strung with bands of salt water miles thick... the little tides--far-distant Apollo plucking feebler than Diana... But now the harp of the seas had been torn from Dianna's and Apollo's hands and was being twanged by fingers eighty times stronger... "

Greco-Roman classical religion

world

2015

Leiber, Fritz. The Wanderer. New York: Walker & Co. (1964); pg. 252.

"'I'm sure Charles Fulby was referring to hubris--the sort of high optimism some of the great Greek heroes had that made the gods jealous, so that they destroyed them.' "

Greco-Roman classical religion

world

2018

Bova, Ben. Voyager II: The Alien Within. New York: Tor (1986)

[Frontispiece] "Zeus now addressed the immortals: 'What a lamentable thing it is that men should blame the gods and regard us as the source of their troubles when it is their own wickedness that brings them sufferings worse than any which Destiny allots them.' "

"'This is my circle, Norman McCay,' the Spectre told me. 'The Quintessence... These are Highfather... and the Phantom Stranger... This is Ganthet, survivor of the Guardians of the Universe... and Zeus, of whom you have no doubt heard.'

'The real Zeus?' I asked. 'Lightning bolts and Mount Olympus Zeus?' So far, this trip was only a confirmation of the dearest of my beliefs. Was I now to go through some sort of painstaking reevaluation? Was there something to paganism?

'Well, of course there was something to paganism,' the thunderer thundered, certainly hearing my thoughts as clearly as my outward wonder. 'Why would that involve reevaluating your beliefs? You mortals still have such narrow intellectual passageways. Do you still feel the need to dismiss an old notion every time you consider a new one?' " [Other refs., not in DB. Zeus is prominently featured. See also pg. 223-224, 230, 264, 276, 298.]

"Shazam the wizard was the one, I learned, who had given Captain Marvel his power. The age-old wizard was the synthesis of the particular talents of many of the greatest of Earth's sentient creatures--physical and supernatural alike. Shazam took the power to import Solomon's wisdom, Hercules' strength, Atlas' stamina, Zeus' power, Achilles' courage, and Mercury's speed. A generation ago, Shazam found a boy pure of heart and bestowed all these magic powers on the child, making him Captain Marvel. "

"The ace, with its single spot off center toward a side, still somehow looked like a skull--maybe of a Lilliputian Cyclops. "

Greco-Roman classical religion

world

2025

Stephenson, Neal. Snow Crash. New York: Bantam (1992); pg. 110.

"'Yeah. Every year, the Greeks had to pony up a few virgins and send them to Crete as tribute. Then the king put them into the labyrinth, and the minotaur ate them. I used to read that story when I was a kid and wonder who the hell these guys were, on Crete, that everyone else was so scared of them that they would meekly give up their children to be eaten every year...' "

Greco-Roman classical religion

world

2025

Stephenson, Neal. Snow Crash. New York: Bantam (1992); pg. 192.

"'...speaking in tongues?'...'glossolalia'...Pagan Greeks did it--Plato called it theomania. The Oriental cults of the Roman Empire did it...' "

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